Tuesday, 23 January 2024

Walker

Here’s a walkthrough for Freddie’s Nurikabe: https://youtu.be/CNCwy-kjk0g

Today’s GAPP is a Fillomino, another Puzzle Ramayan genre! 🦦 Fillomino is a longtime favorite genre of mine, and it holds a special place in my personal history with puzzle setting. It was the first genre I ever wrote and shared (through paper copies!) with friends; the first genre on my puzzle blog, which brought me into the online puzzle community; and the first genre that I ever submitted for publication.

Solving and setting Fillomino brings back good memories for me. One of my favorite Fillomino puzzles, posted in 2012, is by Palmer Mebane, an author whose puzzles got me to love the genre. The note underneath says "It occurred to me recently that 1s are probably my favorite Fillomino clues, amazingly enough. Hard to pick between 3s and 4s for second place though." Personally, I’ve come to like 6s, which are a useful medium size for many of the deductions I like. But I have to agree that 1s are the best, and I hope that this puzzle communicates at least some of the reasons why.

Rules: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Two regions of the same size may not share an edge. Clued cells must belong to a region containing the indicated number of cells. (A region may contain any number of clues, including none at all.)

Here’s a GAPP 101: Try using the property that a cell next to a 1 can't also contain a 1.

Here’s the most recent GAPP classic Fillomino, by Menderbug, which links to several prior ones: Archive: Monday, 18 September 2023

Example (by clover) (puzzlink): https://tinyurl.com/2p8kc8mc

Solve in 3:01 or under for a Speedy Sloth! 🦥
Complete in 6:01 or under for a Quick Crab! 🦀
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will earn a One-Clued Becard! 🐦

Puzzle (puzzlink): http://tinyurl.com/3n9wfmnb